So… GamerGate is still happening. It won’t stop happening. It’s almost comical now, with pro-GGers screaming about Silverstring Media and “social justice warriors,” and anti-GGers refusing to admit that perhaps the games media aren’t as ethical and balanced as they think they are. Carter Dotson of Pocket Gamer explains that both camps should actually have common ground.

Let’s switch gears. On a completely non-GamerGate-related note, Tom Bramwell of Eurogamer explains why he wishes more games were just “vertical slices.” Detailed demos are often prepared for press events and expos. But that level of polish is difficult to apply to an entire game. Shortening the experience and charging a lower price might be the way to go.

That’s enough nonsense for today. See you next week, digital adventurers.

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Mixed feelings. I’m not a fan of the campaign to put financial pressure on sites by encouraging advertisers to leave them; if you don’t like what a site has to say, simply criticize it and stop giving it page views. Moreover, Gamasutra is a trade publication whose intended audience leans more towards people within the industry than regular consumers.

On the other hand, Intel has a right to pull support if it thinks that advertising on Gamasutra isn’t worth it. I don’t think Intel is the bad guy here.

You know what? I agree with that. Political positions should not cost someone their livelihood. Vote with wallet and all that.

Except that the same crowd has a number of instances in which they’ve done the same thing and reveled in it. See: Brandon Eich. I truly despise Prop 8. Truly. Yet I see him partially as a casualty of a system that mixes money and politics and hold the system at fault more than anything else.

Regardless, it’s a bigger load of hypocrisy that makes me think less of everyone involved. That’s kinda what really stings: knowing that the same people who are targets in this would be gleeful if they were leading the charge.

Not only that, but David Hill is now tying a suicide to Gamergate. I have looked through the deceased’s suicide note and associated stuff and there is not a single mention of Gamergate. As someone who lives with clinical depression, I am incensed.

Many anti-Gamergaters are Pharisees. Many Gamergaters are trolls. Is this the best we got? The Gamergate behavior is nothing surprising, but I can’t believe someone like Chris Franklin is acting so (as you so eloquently put it) obtuse. He isn’t “speaking to power”, he’s lobbying for a personal and group brand. It certainly makes sense of the foxtrotting some of his views have taken in the past.

What’s amazing from looking at the Patreons is how disgustingly incestuous it all is: these writers aren’t servicing an audience; they are each others’ audience. It’s writers paying each other to write and not to be read. Who the fuck cares for whether or not the audience exists, eh?